The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund (the Fund) announced that as part of its planned closure, it has awarded £3.14 million in legacy grants to organisations whose work is continuing to improve the lives of disadvantaged people around the world.
In Africa, 19 organisations working in palliative care in seven African countries have been awarded.
Speaking about the legacy grants, the Fund’s Chief Executive, Dr Astrid Bonfield said:
“Our aim is that these grants will help enable recipient organisations to keep building on the many successes they’ve achieved to date and help them to continue to create positive, long-term social change that helps generations to come.”
The Fund also announced that The Royal Foundation of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry (the Royal Foundation) has agreed to become the legal owner of the Fund after it operationally closes at the end of 2012.
Nick Booth, Chief Executive of The Royal Foundation of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry said:
“We feel it is appropriate and important that the Royal Foundation becomes the legal owner of the Fund after its planned closure, to ensure both the Fund’s name is safeguarded and any future income donated to the Fund is able to be spent on charitable causes.”
Since 1997 the Fund, which will cease to operate in December 2012 after 15 years of grantmaking, has given over £100 million to charitable causes and supported more than 400 organisations in every continent across the globe.
The decision to cease operating was confirmed by the Fund in 2007, at the launch of a five-year Strategic Plan, which set out how it intended to use – or “spend-out” – its remaining resources on an ambitious, time-limited programme aimed at creating long-term social change.
As part of the preparations for closure, the Directors of the Fund’s Trustee Company have been very keen to ensure that if any money is donated to the Fund after its operations have ceased, this money is not lost to charity and instead continues to make a positive difference to people’s lives.
Over the past five years, the Fund has spent almost £25 million on working with partner organisations to secure sustainable improvements in the lives of countless numbers of people with HIV/AIDS, cancer and other life-limiting illness in sub-Saharan Africa; child refugees and young people seeking asylum in the UK; vulnerable people in the criminal justice system in the UK; and individuals and families around the world affected by the use of cluster munitions and other explosive remnants of war.
Further details about the Fund’s approach to its closure are available to download via a Fund briefing published on the Fund’s website.
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